


gestaltzerfall

by SleepyMaddy



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: (for the doctor anyway), F/M, VERY liberal use of temporal mechanics, because i physically Cannot remember which ep is which, but pre The Timeless Children, fun fact: the wip title for this was 'hell bent take 2', in short: the master finds out about the confession dial, like a lot, references to heaven sent, set post Spyfall, this is confession dial angst basically, thoschei but like... canon level
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:54:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24981913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleepyMaddy/pseuds/SleepyMaddy
Summary: At first, she thinks she’s dreaming.She doesn’t do much of that, these days –doesn’t sleep long enough for it. But it’s the most likely explanation for those rough stone walls, for that stale, sea-salted air, for that overwhelming, echoing silence.And then the first fly buzzes in her ear.Or: The 13th Doctor finds herself stuck in the past –literally. The Master is characteristically unhelpful.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor & The Master (Dhawan), Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 93





	gestaltzerfall

At first, she thinks she’s dreaming.

She doesn’t do much of that, these days –doesn’t sleep long enough for it. But it’s the most likely explanation for those rough stone walls, for that stale, sea-salted air, for that overwhelming, echoing silence.

And then the first fly buzzes in her ear.

Instinct takes over –the kind of instinct forged in repetition. She’s running, along circular corridors and past television screens, running away from flies and shrouds and confessions.

She’s not thinking; her feet know exactly where to go, and she turns into a walkway. She already knows the door at the end is locked, she _knows_ that, _how can she know that?_ but she still runs, she still tries.

It doesn’t open, but it’s too late to turn back. The Veil is already at the other end of the hall, slow but inexorable as it makes its way towards him –no, her.

She cajoles the door open even though she knows she’ll only find stone on the other side.

The Veil is on her now, flies buzzing in her ears, overwhelming, and she’s afraid, she’s so _afraid_ , she’s _afraid to die_ –

The Veil stops, hand outstretched, flies hovering in the air.

The wheels turn, the walls move, and she runs.

This is a dance and, as it turns out, she still knows all the steps.

Here is what she knows:

Once upon a time, when she was a lot taller, and a lot more Scottish, the High Council of the Time Lords of Gallifrey believed she knew something about the prophesied destruction of their planet. In an attempt to avoid that destruction, they interrogated her; imprisoned her in her own Confession Dial for four and a half billion years, which they turned into a bespoke torture chamber.

Once upon a time, much later, Gallifrey was destroyed anyway. It burned, and the High Council burned with it.

These two facts, combined, can only mean one thing: something is trying very hard to make her think she is back in that Confession Dial.

But she can’t be –no Time Lords left, so no one to trap her there. Whatever this is, it isn’t real.

Unfortunately, what it _is,_ is very realistic.

She coughs up a mouthful of salt water, pulls herself onto the bank, and stumbles her way inside the building. A fire is crackling, and next to it, a dark velvet coat is drying.

She blinks.

A fire is crackling, and next to it, a sky-blue coat is drying.

It’s easier to remember in the quiet moments. When she’s alone, when the Veil is somewhere that’s not _here_ , then she can think, she can remember that this isn’t real. But as soon as the first fly approaches, something that can only be described as _habit_ takes over. She runs, she throws a stool through a window, and she confesses secrets that have not been secret for a very long time.

Old habits die hard –especially when they’re forged over that kind of time.

It’s getting harder to remember.

She spends more time counting instead, more time ticking the seconds down –82 minutes, over and over again. She sees the word “BIRD” traced onto the sand, and she forgets that she’s been here before, she forgets who wrote that word, forgets what it means. Something burns around her wrist, but before she can wonder about it, she has to run again, has to follow the steps.

She always remembers when she sees the wall, but by then, it’s too late.

The first time she sees him, he’s in the garden.

Night has fallen, there’s a rectangle of freshly dug earth in the centre of the space, and she knows exactly what she’s supposed to do. She also knows what she’ll find, but that doesn’t stop her from picking up the shovel and getting to work. She has an hour –better make it count.

“Evening, dear.”

The _wrongness_ of it is jarring; it pulls the ground from underneath her feet, makes her drop the shovel and recoil. This isn’t _supposed_ to happen –it’s like a river suddenly deciding to flow backwards, water moving against the current.

He’s sitting on a stone bench a few feet away, elbows on knees, gaze riveted on her. She’s still so thrown that it takes her a moment to recognize him but the purple plaid suit and navy shirt eventually click into place.

The Master grins at her.

“You can’t be here,” she says, because it’s _true_.

The fact that his presence is as impossible as gravity suddenly deciding to work the other way around doesn’t seem to bother him. “When has that ever stopped me?”

The seconds are still ticking by –she feels them at the back of her head and in her fingertips as she taps them together. “You shouldn’t be here.” The Veil is getting closer but she’s not making _progress_ , it’s going to get here and she will be off course–

“Neither should you. You know that, right?”

As soon as he says it, she remembers. _Not real –none of this can be real_. She blinks, dazed by the revelation.

The Master’s smile becomes more subdued, but more genuine as well. He leans back against the wall of the garden. “Where _is_ here, anyway? What is this place?” His mouth curls in distaste. “And why’d you spend so _long_ here?”

“It’s not real,” she whispers, because it isn’t, and why is it so hard to remember that?

He makes a face, tilting his head to the side. “Not exactly,” he says, and it’s a _challenge_.

A fly buzzes in her ear.

Adrenaline floods her –she’s lost count, how could she have _lost count?_ – and by the time she manages to block the door, by the time the Veil has left, the bench at the other end of the garden is empty. But it’s okay –she’s much too busy digging to notice.

“You won’t see _this_ coming!”

She’s falling –she should be used to it, by now, a part of her thinks, but she’s not quite sure _why_ she thinks that.

_Rule one of dying: don’t_ , she thinks as she falls, and there’s a laugh in her head that’s not hers –broken, gasping, like it’s the funniest joke she’s ever told, but she doesn’t _get it_.

_Don’t worry_ , and it still isn’t her voice, silver dancing around the edges and seeping into the cracks, _you will_.

Purple light and starry skies mix and blur together in front of her eyes, her wrist _burns_ but when she crashes, she’s surprised to find it’s into cold, salt water, instead of a metal roof or a stone floor.

He’s sitting in her seat at the dining table when she walks into the room.

“Ah, there you are.” He takes a sip of soup. “Food was getting cold, so I figured I’d help myself. Hope you don’t mind.”

She’s still out of breath from her run from the other end of the castle, but the sight of him jars her right back into reality –or at least into the fact that this isn’t it.

“What’s going on?” she asks, making her way over to the table. Her steps feel predetermined and, just because she can, she forces herself to take a different path, approaching from the left instead of the right. It feels _wrong_ , but it’s a kind of wrong that’s familiar. Now if only she could _place_ it…

He watches her with a slow smile and puts the spoon down. “Oh, _good_ , very good.”

“Is this you? Are you doing this?” Her mind is _whirling_ , as she reacquaints herself with the facts, with the memories she’d forgotten. His eyes are wide and feverish, and as she stares, it becomes ridiculously _easy_ to remember that there are no Time Lords left. The knowledge tastes like ashes on her tongue, but it’s better than salt water.

He sits back against the chair, arms crossed as he looks her up and down. “Oh no, love. This is nothing to do with me. I was just… curious.” He sighs, looking around at the grand, empty room with a curious glint in his eyes. “Mind you, I think I’ve got more questions than I started with.”

When her mind is clearer like this, she can feel the _pull_ , and the familiarity clicks, finally. It’s _time_ , grasping at her; events, trying to slot back in their rightful place. It’s trying to set her back on course, and resisting is like going against the current –doomed to fail. She probably doesn’t have long before she falls back in, before the stream carries her away.

She clings on. “If not you, then _what_?”

He uses his right hand to circle his left wrist, twisting, and immediately, her own wrist burns, like she’s wearing a bracelet made of red hot metal. She hisses in pain and he laughs. “Oh, figure it out, why don’t you?”

There’s something silvery at the edge of his smile, but before she can ask, the current swells and she’s carried away.

The water is in her eyes, her mouth, her lungs, the cold burning its way through her. And everywhere she looks, skulls.

Something about the shock of the cold always clears her head, always helps her remember, that it’s not real, that she’s not really _here_ but–

Well.

Those skulls have to come from _somewhere_ , don’t they?

It hurts. Every single time, it hurts.

She stares at the portrait, at the flecks of paint peeling off one by one, and she lets it hurt. Lets the sharp, scorching hollowness fill her until she can’t breathe, until she’s on _fire_.

Clara Oswald is dead, and it’s all her fault.

It stops her in her tracks, stops her running, even though she knows what’s coming. When she feels like her lungs are about to burst from it, she takes that pain and crushes it, lets the shards dig into her until she bleeds, and molds them into anger and rage.

Whoever is doing this, whoever is using the memory of Clara Oswald as an instrument, is going to _pay_.

“Now she _was_ something, wasn’t she?”

The wheels that operate the castle haven’t turned, but they might as well have: the ground shifts under her feet as she turns to find the Master sprawled on the bed, propped up on his elbow. He gestures towards the painting with his free hand, and her memories are a dizzying rush, the weight of them smothering the fire.

Clara Oswald isn’t dead –she doesn’t know where she is, but she saved her. She overthrew the High Council, stole a TARDIS, and she _saved_ her.

“Clara Oswald,” he continues, enunciating every syllable. “The closest thing to an interesting pet you ever got, I’d say.” He grins, too wide, too sharp. “I _should_ do a social call, one of these days.”

“Why are you still here?” The facts are clicking into place, even faster than before, but she already knows it won’t be enough; with all that knowledge comes her memories of this place, and she knows she’s got seconds before the Veil arrives.

He sits up, looking at her like he’s finding her remarkably slow. “Because you’re still here.” He makes a show of looking at his watch. “Honestly, I’m disappointed. This is taking you _ages_.”

He’s trying to rile her up. Worse –it’s working. She grits her teeth, waving a fly out of her face. “It’s taking me ages because you’re not helping.”

He’s on her in a blink, walking right into her personal space, face inches from hers. She doesn’t give him the satisfaction of stepping back. “Help?” he hisses at her. “Shouldn’t you be _above_ that?” The anger in his features melts back into pleasantly surprised amusement as his gaze slides over her shoulder. “Oh, looks like you’ve got company.”

She turns, and time catches her, drags her under again.

She’s at the top of the observation tower, and the stars glitter above her, beautiful and bright and wrong.

That’s the irony, isn’t it? She’s alone, and she has time before the Veil gets here, so she can peek her head out of the water, she can breathe, she can remember, and that’s why the stars are wrong.

The stars are wrong because they’re right.

They match an early 21st century configuration –a few years ahead, at the most. No noticeable shifts, nothing that would imply time travel.

And since she remembers, she knows what it means –it means she still has _so long_ to go.

She has a day and a half.

Every time, she thinks she remembers how much it hurts. Every time, she’s proven wrong.

It’s so much worse than she remembers.

It hurts in a million different ways, millions of cells burning up, healing only to be destroyed again –the spark of regeneration, trying to catch, over and over, only to die out after scorching her.

She always remembers, during that day and a half, but it’s no use: the pain might be familiar, but it’s also overwhelming, and there’s no time to be spent thinking when she has to make it to the top of the tower.

The door to the teleport chamber opens and she stumbles inside, making her way to the control console. The only reason she makes it, she thinks, is because she knows she always does.

She doesn’t notice him until the electrodes are on her temples.

He’s on the other side of the glass chamber, distorted and hazy. The only reason she knows he’s actually here is because the _wrong_ , grating feeling is somehow still perceivable through the haze of pain she’s been living in for a day and a half. She almost laughs at that.

She pauses, hand on the lever. She can’t wait long.

His expression is too blurred to make out, but his voice is calm –calmer than she remembers ever hearing it. “Make no sound.”

The lever comes down and she _burns_.

_Burning_ the old her, to make a new one.

_Story of your life, eh, Doctor?_ It doesn’t sound like her voice.

The words stick.

They stick even as she jumps from a window, as she climbs out of the water, as she digs through the earth. He’s not here, but he doesn’t need to be –his words burn around her wrist and play in her ear, constantly, in sync with her tapping, his voice keeping her afloat. Make no sound.

There’s a game every young Prydonian plays at least once during their time at the Academy.

After looking into the Untempered Schism for the first time, your perception shifts. Slowly, at first, and then all at once. It becomes _more_. Time becomes tangible, becomes a net of shifting possibilities that tangle all around you. It takes years to start understanding it.

Once that’s done, however, it takes very little time to start _playing_ with it.

As it turns out, there are lots of games to be played with time. This particular one is called Eighth Man Bound.

It’s a simple game; the player sits surrounded with classmates, and lets them repeat their name, over and over, until it loses all meaning. But a Time Lord’s name isn’t just a name –it’s their sense of self, their timeline woven into every syllable. When _that_ loses meaning, the player becomes unmoored, floating in their own timestream, pulled from one regeneration to the next. The goal is to get a glimpse of your own future –the record is eight regenerations forward, hence the name.

The Doctor was always good at it. There was a simplicity, he found at the time, in untying yourself from the present, in floating in that space where your own self becomes a composite of parts, rather than a coherent whole.

Of course, the difficult part is to bring yourself back to that present, to fit those pieces back together when the game ends –many are those who don’t manage it, and who end up with their timestream unravelling for their trouble. Not that it stops anyone from continuing to play.

_Eighth man bound; make no sound_.

She stands in front of a sparkling white wall of azbantium.

The Veil will be here soon, but she doesn’t speak, doesn’t move, and the contrast with what she _should_ be doing –knuckles against diamond, like a beak on a mountainside– pulls at her, the current trying to drag her back into the rightful flow of time.

Slowly, she lifts a hand and brushes it against the surface. There’s an indent –the start of an erosion that would –will, did, should– take billions of years to be complete.

But she doesn’t have to live through them; not again. She’s done it before, and that’s the point, isn’t it? Something has sent her back to that particular point in her timestream, and is forcing her through it again. That’s why diverging from the set course is so _wrong_ , why it’s so hard to remember –the current is pre-determined time. Not _fixed_ , not completely, but set events and actions. A river staying within its banks –with only tolerance for the occasional splash.

She hears the first fly, but only distantly, too lost in ancient memories. That was something that could happen, when you played the game –coming back was difficult, yes, but coming back to the right time was even harder. Sometimes the pieces of yourself would reassemble, grounding you into place, but you’d be left stuck at the wrong point in your own timestream.

It’d only happened to her once, and she’d managed to disassemble the pieces again almost immediately. She’d floated in between times again, until she’d gone back to herself, in the right time and place, in the rightness of _right now_.

The Veil shuffles in her direction along the dark corridor behind her, and she takes a step back from the wall. She knows what she has to do.

As a child, she’d needed the repetition of her name, that litany that turned the familiar into the bizarre, that turned _who you were_ into the alien and the unknown. But here, now, that sense of foreignness is oh so easy to achieve.

She takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, and mutters: “How many seconds in eternity?”

She sees it, flashing before her eyes –the endless repetition of the same day, over and over, through billions of years. The same gestures, the same words, the same _thoughts_ , until they start separating, until they start being so familiar that she becomes certain she’s never seen them before, much less done them.

_How many seconds in eternity?_

The click of the seconds as she marks them. The laboured, pained shuffling of the Veil. The crack of bone against azbantium.

_How many seconds in eternity?_

The searing cold of the water in her lungs. The hollowness of loss and guilt. The scalding pain of being born again.

_How many seconds–_

The Veil reaches for her.

The wall of azbantium crumples into a billion separate fragments.

The banks break, and the river becomes an ocean.

When she comes to, she’s relieved to find time is right again. She’s neither unmoored between times, neither constrained by a timeline that’s already written. Her instincts kicked in at some point, presumably, and have brought the parts together at the right point. She’s made it back to the constantly shifting potential of the _present_.

Warmth blooms behind her eyes and at the base of her skull, and she realizes that she’s also made it _home_. The TARDIS’s presence is as comforting as it is muted –the ship is clearly trying not to overwhelm her, and she breathes a feeling of gratitude in response.

“Morning, dear.”

Her eyes snap open, and even the dim orange light of the console room is too bright for a moment. She waits until her vision clears to push herself into a sitting position.

He’s sitting a few feet away, back against one of the crystal pillars, one leg bent and hand resting on his knee. He’s staring at her, but his usual intensity –and something else she can’t quite identify– is subdued under a veil of exhaustion. His skin is ashen, and deep, dark circles are dug beneath his eyes.

“You look terrible,” she mutters. Her voice is weak, and she should mind, but she finds she doesn’t really have the strength for that at the moment.

He laughs at that, hoarse and broken, scraps of sound grating against her eardrums like shards of glass.

“You’re welcome,” he says pointedly, and his gaze slides to something on the floor next to her.

She follows it to find a long, thin creature curled up on the warm metal. It’s a gleaming black, and about the size of her hand.

“Temporal leech,” the Master says as she looks at her left wrist, finding a red circle of a scar that still pulses faintly. Two puncture marks surround it on the inside of her wrist, right above the vein. “Nasty things. Part of the Trickster’s Brigade, if memory serves.”

“There was a signal,” she says slowly, memories of the immediate past slotting back into place now that she’s back in her own present. “A temporal disturbance, the TARDIS picked up on it.”

He snorts. “Yes, that would be _you_ , dear.” He gestures at the dead creature. “This thing hooked to your timeline and sent you back to a particular spot. That sort of thing creates ripples, in every direction –past and future.” He shrugs. “You investigated your own mistake.”

“But why are _you_ here?” She realizes her fingers are tapping against her leg, ticking the seconds and she forces them to still.

Another shrug. “I picked up the disturbance, same as you. It was… _peculiar_. That was explained when I saw it’d trapped _you_ , of all people. At first I thought I’d just destroy the thing, but I figured I’d check which part of your timestream it’d sunk its claws into.” A humourless smile spreads on his feature. “Good thing I did. The temporal feedback from _that_ kind of anomaly would have taken out this entire universal quadrant.”

She’s still getting used to the freedom of not having every move and every thought be pre-defined, pre-written, and so it takes her a little while to process his words. Even once she has, she’s not sure what to say –the sheer amount of _possibilities_ is dizzying.

“You never told me,” he says eventually, tone strangely conversational –like they’re discussing the weather, and not that time she was tortured for four billion years. “Even in the Vault, you never said.”

She snaps her head up to look at him, shocked. It’d seemed an unspoken agreement between the two of them, from the moment he’d revealed himself on that plane to the last she’d seen of him in that hangar, surrounded by angry Kasaavin. No mention of the Vault, no mention of the past –she’d come the closest to breaking that agreement, on top of the Eiffel Tower, seething about games and _betrayals_.

But then again, this moment feels –different. Not quite solid. She’s still getting used to the flow of time itself; her timeline is still readjusting after the attack, aftershocks wracking it and twisting it every which way. There’s a good chance she won’t even remember this particular exchange, once the dust settles.

And so she replies, voice low, and she doesn’t know if it’s because it’s the best she can muster, or if it’s because she doesn’t want to risk breaking that moment. “Not much to say, was there? All a bit repetitive.”

He snickers at that, and she smiles –it’s ever so slightly bitter, but she can’t help it. Silence stretches for a little while before he speaks again. “How long?” he asks, letting his head fall back against the crystal. “In total.”

She laughs a little, but there’s no humour in it. “Don’t you know?” He’d been in her timestream, after all, and in her head. A violation she should maybe be angry about, but then again, if he hadn’t done it, odds were she’d still be stuck in her own past.

A faint shake of the head. “Not precisely. It was –too much. But the scale of it…” he trails off, eyes fixed on her, wide and unblinking, and she catches sight of that same unidentifiable glint. “That suggests a billion years, I’d say. At least.”

She doesn’t answer. There’s nothing to say.

He sighs, long and slow. “And I suppose that was dear old Rassilon’s initiative?” She doesn’t reply, but her fists clench before she can help it, and she has no doubt he catches that. He nods to himself. “Thought so. It’s so… inelegant.”

“Why’d you help me?” It’s the one thing that doesn’t make sense. He’s made it clear, from the moment they first faced each other as themselves, that whatever he’s found on Gallifrey is too much to forgive –bigger than their history, bigger than any form of friendship they could have. She’s responded in kind because, well, what choice does she have? She’s spent enough time _trying_ with Missy, who was at least somewhat agreeable to the idea, and look where that’s gotten them. She’s not going to try again with an incarnation that seems hell bent on seeing her and her friends dead.

This time, he’s the one who ignores the question. His smile turns sardonic, and the unidentifiable glint becomes horribly familiar. “At least now I know why you’re so angry about all this,” he says and his mocking tone isn’t enough to disguise that _rage_ lurking under the surface. This incarnation is so _angry_ , always on the verge of breaking. “Wanted to burn it yourself, did you?”

And that rage spreads so easily, fire that catches on her own temper. She grits her teeth and glares in his direction as she lets it course through her, lets it use the grief the thought of Gallifrey still creates as kindling. She’s pretty sure that the only thing that’s keeping her from actual violence is the exhaustion still weighing on her like lead.

She’s about to snap back at him when something _silvery_ flashes in his smile. The sight sends her time sense reeling backwards and she winces –the temporal leech has made her hyper sensitive, and the sudden tension hurts. “You’re from my future,” she says and she immediately knows she’s right.

He smiles with an easy guilt, like a child caught skipping school who knows he won’t get into trouble –it’s an expression she knows well, although not on this face. The familiarity aches more than it should, and she puts that on the temporal disturbances, too. “Oops. Caught me.”

He stands, and she doesn’t miss the way tremors wrack through him –you’d think he was the one who’d just been stuck in his own timestream. He inclines his head in her direction. “Let’s keep the timelines intact, shall we? Or at least what’s left of them.”

He starts in the direction of the door, and something _tears_ through the Doctor.

This is her only chance. It’s the first conversation they’ve had that’s not overshadowed with _plotting_ and threats of death, and she has a feeling that fragile, suspended quality isn’t something that’ll be easily replicated. The next time she sees him –and she has no doubt that she will, it’s written all over his face–, she’ll bite back, teeth against teeth, words sharp and destructive. Next time, they’ll both let their anger take centre stage.

This is her only chance to ask, and so she does. “Why did you do it?” she says, and it’s pleading, and she should hate that, but she doesn’t care. She has spent _days_ staring at the carnage, at the ruins the planet she still called _home_ has become, ash and bone sticking to her skin and lungs, and she just wants to know why.

She _needs_ to know.

He stops, back still to her. After seconds that feel like they should be part of eternity, he turns his head and speaks to her over his shoulder. “You’ll find out soon enough. But in the meantime…” Their gazes lock and for a moment, she sees the fury in his eyes –not directed at her, but _on her behalf_ , and she _hates_ the warmth that spreads through her at the sight. “In the meantime, do me a favour and pretend it was for _this_ , will you?”

She doesn’t need to ask what he means –the word bends and breaks under the weight of four and a half billion years.

He smiles, that odd, sad smile that seems to be his specialty. “I think that if I’d known, it would’ve been.”

He walks out of the ship, lets the door slam shut behind him, and as unconsciousness drags her eyelids down, she thinks distantly that it should make her angry.

It doesn’t.

**Author's Note:**

> According to Wikipedia, “Gestaltzerfall (German for "shape decomposition") is a psychological phenomenon where delays in recognition are observed when a complex shape is stared at for a while as the shape seems to decompose into its constituting parts. In plain terms, if a subject reads or hears the same term over and over, that term ceases to have any meaning.”
> 
> aka, I have finally achieved my dream of titling a fic with an obscure foreign word referring to a phenomenon I didn’t know had a name. nice!
> 
> Also, Eighth Man Bound is an actual thing from the extended whoverse, and according to the TARDIS wiki, up to 15 students died while playing it every semester, so yeah, time lords are just Like That. 
> 
> Thank you for reading, and I’d love to hear what you thought!
> 
> Come say hi on tumblr: @taardisblue


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